Olga Wornat and Javier Milei’s paths crossed for the first time in a television studio in Buenos Aires. She was a regular guest on a political talk show and he was a histrionic economist that the station used regularly. Once Wornat asked Milei to explain one of his approaches in more detail and suddenly he lost his temper. He shouted, insulted her and got up from the table. She was stunned and managed to tell him to calm down and respect her. Over the headset, one of the producers insisted to Wornat that he was on board with the complaint that ratings were going up and audiences wanted to see more. Within a few months, the story would take an unexpected turn.
Milei – the madman, the politician who raised his voice louder than everyone else, the showman who threw swear words in the air and imitated the singer Leonardo Favio to win the audience’s applause, the candidate with the chainsaw, the cloned dogs and so on plagiarism – confidently won the second round of the presidential elections on November 19th. Argentina, a country angry and fed up with politicians, has accepted a far-right candidacy for the first time in 40 years of democracy. “I don’t think a milestone will be repeated in other countries, it’s really unrepeatable, not even Trump dared to do it,” says the 67-year-old writer and journalist. “The left and progressive parties must open their eyes and analyze deep within themselves whether they are really responding to the needs of the people and reconfiguring themselves to adapt to the new times in which we live, because if not, then with these types of characters.” “They will continue to appear in other countries, even in Mexico,” he adds.
“This was an extremely atypical election campaign, firstly because Argentina is in a catastrophic situation, whether one wins or the other wins, the economic situation will explode,” says the author about the political environment in the South American country. In the presidential election, Milei, the outsider who promised to drastically change the feeling of permanent crisis, faced Sergio Massa, the economy minister of a country with annual inflation of almost 150%. “Between the worst and the worst, Argentina has chosen the worst, it’s a nightmare,” complains Wornat. “In the world, but especially in our countries, right-wing governments almost always ended very badly or in tragedy.”
Vast amounts of ink have been spilled analyzing the Ultra candidate’s triumph and the reasons that brought him to power. “There is enormous ignorance about what Milei stands for. We have seen politicians and people coming out to celebrate their victory without even knowing who or what they are proposing,” says the author. “It’s still so early that I honestly think no one is able to analyze it in depth yet,” he adds.
Olga Wornat, Argentine journalist and writer. Gladys Serrano
Wornat reports in detail on the unknowns and contradictions left by the last Argentine elections: entire cities that turned to Milei even though he did not visit them; Indigenous people who came out to celebrate their triumph despite saying they were “aesthetically inferior”; Union members who did not foresee the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of public offices and who are already beginning to regret it (even though the new president has not yet taken office), rich kids with a penchant for authoritarianism and poor people from slums who went to vote and are shouting in the chorus “destroy everything”. The author pauses and then points to her phone: “And that had a lot to do with it and it didn’t exist in the dimension in which it exists today.” Now everyone has a cell phone, every child has a Tik Tok account and yes, many voted for Tik Tok or what their family told them.”
—Was it more of a vote for the far right or an anti-system vote?
—Many don’t know what the law is, many have no idea. How many of these people knew that they had voted for such absurd proposals as selling organs or allowing parents to sell their children? How many knew that one of their primary advisors was a Flat Earther? How many children talk about defending freedom but have not experienced dictatorship? How many were promised that dollarization would solve everything, without knowing what happened in the 1990s with Menem, the wave of privatization, or how entire families began to literally live on garbage and collecting cardboard? How can one elect someone who justifies Menem and denies the crimes of the dictatorship? They do not know. I say that my country is like a big madhouse. My country has elected a madman, a mentally disturbed man.
– How great is the responsibility of Peronism and the government of Alberto Fernández for this triumph?
– Very much. They opened the door to the monster. Let’s say we were already bad. In reality we were never well, there was never a “normal” country, it was always like a roller coaster ride.
Wornat gives a long historical account of Argentina’s political ups and downs, from Raúl Alfonsín to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, but he spends several minutes on the roles of Alberto Fernández and Mauricio Macri, the last two leaders. “Alberto doesn’t recognize anything, absolutely nothing. In four years he has done nothing. If it was all Cristina’s fault, why did you take the job? “He always seemed like a mediocre person to me,” asks the author, who also doesn’t believe in the quiet president’s decision to go to Spain after his term in office ends. Macri is surprised at the ability to “infiltrate” the new Milei government, as he himself had expected months before, with several appointments linked to him in the Economic Cabinet, “the same ones who left us a melted country” as he did expressed. “He’s a dark creature,” he says of Macri.
—Were you surprised by the Mexican right’s reaction to Milei’s victory?
– Yes and no. I’m not surprised by someone like Claudio Eduardo Verástegui doesn’t surprise me, he’s a poor creature. I believe that the hatred of López Obrador is so great that it makes them say something. It is like it is. That’s what I think. That’s why they are the way they are. Fox was always the same, but now, in his eighties, he’s saying some nonsense.
“I don’t think there is a Mexican Milei, he appeared at the right time and in the right place,” emphasizes Wornat. “There are things we don’t like about this president, but he is a democratic president, he is human and he makes mistakes, but he is democratic.” Democracy is not in danger, as the right says. “Hate and resentment are stronger than thinking and seeing how they can win democratically,” he points out the differences between Argentina, his home country, and Mexico, the country where he has spent much of his journalistic career vocal critic of the governments of Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón and the PRI. In six months, Mexicans will go to the polls to elect a new president.
“What I see is a shift to the right around the world,” he says. When you talk about the rise of the far right, you also talk about a country where four out of ten people are poor and where price volatility makes the speeches of traditional politicians ring hollow. On the other hand, one of the biggest fears is that the Milei government will open the door to the criminalization and persecution of poverty. “It is a frightening paradox,” says the author, “the biggest losers will be those who voted for this man who screamed like a madman and promised the impossible.”
Olga Wornat.Gladys Serrano
Wornat, who suffered the excesses and had to flee the dictatorship, assures that he is not afraid of setting up a repressive apparatus in the government to silence criticism and is preparing the new edition of Putas y Guerrilleras, the book which he wrote with Miriam Lewin about the abuses against the women who went through the concentration camps in Argentina. “Milei is no longer Milei, he is no longer the same as he was during the election campaign, although he is still violent, deeply authoritarian and capable of anything,” he comments. “I’m more afraid of the violent people who follow him, who are more violent than ever, of someone screaming at me, you fucking left-handed, and breaking a stick over my head out of nowhere,” he admits.
“A very dark time is coming,” predicts Wornat, who concludes the diagnosis with a panorama made even darker by the decline of democracy and the state’s failure to meet the population’s basic needs. And above all, due to a profound deterioration of a society that is entering an unknown political moment. “Argentina is becoming a cannibalistic country, that’s what I’m afraid of,” says the author. “Nothing good can come from this.”
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